First private launch to the ISS scheduled for 5am tomorrow

SpaceX's Dragon ready to take food, equipment to orbit.

After being pushed back several times, the first launch of a private vehicle to the International Space Station (ISS) is now set for early tomorrow morning (based on the timezone where the launch will take place). The Dragon capsule is set on top of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, and the assemblage was raised to a vertical launch position overnight. If all goes well, the vehicle will be sent to low-Earth orbit at 4:55am EDT tomorrow morning. For those of you located overseas (or willing to wake up early in the morning), NASA will have live coverage available via NASA TV.

The Dragon capsule will only be carrying supplies on this mission—food, clothing, batteries, and a laptop, according to NASA. But the journey should give both the company and NASA the chance to test out the capsule's sensors and control systems as it approaches—and assuming all those check out—docks with the ISS. This will provide an essential validation of a system that is intended to ultimately carry astronauts on a similar journey. Dragon capsules are in the process of being certified for human use.

The launch window for reaching the ISS from a site in Florida is fairly narrow, so everything will have to go off without a significant hitch for the launch to take place. In other words, if you set your alarm that early and wind up with nothing to watch, don't blame us. We warned you.

48 Reader Comments

Yeah, I think I'll sleep in a bit and catch the recap at work. Given that a bunch of us here waited with baited breath for the live online engine test a while ago, only to be disappointed with glitches, setbacks, and a rather anticlimactic puff of smoke, I think an extra hour of sleep is a fair gamble.

Off Topic: I was looking at the pic and it reminded me of one of my first rockets on 'Kerbal Space Program'. I was going to post that if you're a rocket nut or even just looking for a really cool game, still in Alpha I think mind you, it rocks. Just searched and apparently there is a thread here at Ars on it. Will be checking it out...

Yeah, I think I'll sleep in a bit and catch the recap at work. Given that a bunch of us here waited with baited breath for the live online engine test a while ago, only to be disappointed with glitches, setbacks, and a rather anticlimactic puff of smoke, I think an extra hour of sleep is a fair gamble.

Had a similar experience with the first test flight. Group of us in a room watching both NASA TV and the coverage on SpaceX's website (which seemed a little better IMO).

"We are at T-60 seconds. Aaaaaand we are holding at T-60 seconds as a redline violation has stopped any further progress for launch. Engineers are currently troubleshooting the problem to determine if the count is recoverable."

We broke and came back an hour or two later to watch the actual launch. Since it's an ISS mission, I sincerely hope they get all the way through the count without any issues.

Sure hope it goes up this time! So many delays and that's been rough on families of people whose ashes are also part of the payload. My GF is there to watch it now. Beam me up Scotty! (some of Doohan is in there, a make-up for their failed launch).

So excited. This marks the beginning era of private sector space travel. No more NASA dependent bs and waiting NASA to launch 2 vehicles a year costing 3 times as much.

Unfortunately NASA still subsidizes a good chunk of private development through CCDEV, CCDEV2, and COTS. So they're not there just yet.

But the eventual goal is for private companies to move off the government gravy train. And I wholeheartedly agree with you that achieving milestones such as this is exciting and very hopeful for the private industry.

So excited. This marks the beginning era of private sector space travel. No more NASA dependent bs and waiting NASA to launch 2 vehicles a year costing 3 times as much.

Unfortunately NASA still subsidizes a good chunk of private development through CCDEV, CCDEV2, and COTS. So they're not there just yet.

But the eventual goal is for private companies to move off the government gravy train. And I wholeheartedly agree with you that achieving milestones such as this is exciting and very hopeful for the private industry.

Indeed. Though it's a huge step forward.

And @Carbon Fibre, it's way more than 3x cost savings, especially if SpaceX can realize their dream of fully reusable rockets.

What's always amazed me most was the fact that new engine design had stagnated for more than a decade before SpaceX started building new rocket designs again. I'd always assumed this was a growing, active industry, but I guess it wasn't - until now!

So exited. I better damned well get my own space cruiser before I die.

who retrieves the capsule after it comes back? US military? Someone else?

Retrieve it? why it will be carrying garbage. let it crater into the ground and that's where it gets buried.

That is after all the future of space travel.

it gets retrieved because unlike all the other cargo ships its designed to return cargo, something only the shuttle was able to do in large quantities. Soyuz can bring back a few pounds. Large experiments, equipment, etc will get rides back on Dragon. At the same time it helps validate it for eventually returning crew as well.

So excited. This marks the beginning era of private sector space travel. No more NASA dependent bs and waiting NASA to launch 2 vehicles a year costing 3 times as much.

Unfortunately NASA still subsidizes a good chunk of private development through CCDEV, CCDEV2, and COTS. So they're not there just yet.

But the eventual goal is for private companies to move off the government gravy train. And I wholeheartedly agree with you that achieving milestones such as this is exciting and very hopeful for the private industry.

Indeed. Though it's a huge step forward.

And @Carbon Fibre, it's way more than 3x cost savings, especially if SpaceX can realize their dream of fully reusable rockets.

What's always amazed me most was the fact that new engine design had stagnated for more than a decade before SpaceX started building new rocket designs again. I'd always assumed this was a growing, active industry, but I guess it wasn't - until now!

So exited. I better damned well get my own space cruiser before I die.

Yes, somehow there's always intervention from he Gov. But one thing I kinda went along to is the budget cuts on NASA (which I didn't agree in the first place) but this enabled a forceful and friendly move from NASA to create these competitive programs. One thing I never understood is elimination of the Constellation program, costing $$$, and yet re initializing another $$ program like the SLS and not take into account the reuse of LV's such as the Atlas or Delta's and modify them into human rated LV's. Pointless waste imo.

who retrieves the capsule after it comes back? US military? Someone else?

Retrieve it? why it will be carrying garbage. let it crater into the ground and that's where it gets buried.

That is after all the future of space travel.

First, it will be returning with science experiments (as well as trash), so the downmass capability of Dragon will be useful even on this demo mission. Also, Dragon is a reusable spacecraft, with its PICA-X heatshield rated for at least 10 entries. They can recover the spacecraft and launch it again.

SpaceX has their own recovery team. Specially-trained scuba divers, basically.

SpaceX treated me rather rudely when I interviewed with them last month. As in, I was stood up for a phone interview and never heard from them again (after wasting my time with their online programming assessment, which I was told I did great on). I have heard that my experience with these clowns is not unique.

It is a rather small rocket if you look at the size of the man standing there by comparison. I think the ISS docking procedure is going to be a huge challenge. No doubt Nasa is at hand to advise on the docking design and simulate the docking process. It would be a shame if the docking failed and the cargo got lost in space ...

It is a rather small rocket if you look at the size of the man standing there by comparison. I think the ISS docking procedure is going to be a huge challenge. No doubt Nasa is at hand to advise on the docking design and simulate the docking process. It would be a shame if the docking failed and the cargo got lost in space ...

WRT to the time thing it would be aswesome if they could link the times in the article to a worldtime conversion page... you'd think this could be done relatively easily with some sort of [ time ] ... [ time ] tag in their cms.

Well, I went down to watch, but looks like they had a last-minute scrub. Next launch window is on a Tuesday, so I won't be able to watch. Oh well.

ShavenLlama wrote:

SpaceX treated me rather rudely when I interviewed with them last month. [...] Therefore, I'm keeping my fingers crossed hoping for a spectacular launchpad failure.

Seems rather petty, doesn't it? I suppose it might give you a sense of karmic satisfaction, but the consequences of a spectacular launchpad failure (as in, an explosion or collapse of some sort) would be serious enough that it would affect a whole lot more than just SpaceX.

SpaceX treated me rather rudely when I interviewed with them last month. As in, I was stood up for a phone interview and never heard from them again (after wasting my time with their online programming assessment, which I was told I did great on). I have heard that my experience with these clowns is not unique.

SpaceX treated me rather rudely when I interviewed with them last month. As in, I was stood up for a phone interview and never heard from them again (after wasting my time with their online programming assessment, which I was told I did great on). I have heard that my experience with these clowns is not unique.

SpaceX treated me rather rudely when I interviewed with them last month. As in, I was stood up for a phone interview and never heard from them again (after wasting my time with their online programming assessment, which I was told I did great on). I have heard that my experience with these clowns is not unique.

ETA: I know it's unlikely to be UTC, since UTC has no concept of am/pm; they're using unambiguous 24-hour notation. However, I'm highlighting how the lack of UTC -- or even UTC offset -- in the article proper can introduce an annoyance further down the line. Had the article at least provide a UTC offset, I don't have to keep looking up what is meant by an unfamiliar TZ code such as EDT/EST.

Well, glad I slept through it, glad it wasn't a major disaster, but maybe this is a bit of an indication why the space program isn't as popular as it could be (and was).

Series of delays, another abort... sadly seems to be the norm. Hard to get people excited when the very expensive equipment fails more often than it works. I think part of the issue is that people expect things to go perfectly at this point.

Hopefully NASA and the commercial industry can find some way to overcome that. I'm still hoping to make it into space in my lifetime. Id rather not need to win the lottery to make that happen.

Well, glad I slept through it, glad it wasn't a major disaster, but maybe this is a bit of an indication why the space program isn't as popular as it could be (and was).

Series of delays, another abort... sadly seems to be the norm. Hard to get people excited when the very expensive equipment fails more often than it works. I think part of the issue is that people expect things to go perfectly at this point.

Hopefully NASA and the commercial industry can find some way to overcome that. I'm still hoping to make it into space in my lifetime. Id rather not need to win the lottery to make that happen.

Based on the very short delay (just 3 days), the problem shouldn't be something serious. I guess SpaceX just wants to be as perfect as possible. The vehicle's payload might not be living people, but its destination does have people living within.